Philly man killed in WWII bomber crash now positively identified, U.S. says

Henry J. Carlin, a 27-year-old Philadelphia man serving as a navigator on a B-25C “Mitchell” bomber, died when his plane was shot down during a mission in Burma on Aug. 3, 1943.

Four sets of remains were recovered a few years later from a common grave near the village of Kyunpobin in Burma — now known as Myanmar — and locals told American representatives that they came from an “American crash.”

The remains could not be identified at the time, so they were interred as “unknowns” at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, or Punchbowl, in Honolulu.

Thanks to modern technology and identification techniques, the remains of U.S. Army Air Forces First Lt. Henry J. Carlin were officially accounted for this year on April 16, the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced later that month.

The remains of the three other men killed in the crash also were accounted for in April. Two men survived the crash and were captured by Japanese forces.

On Friday, the agency said it had provided Carlin’s family a full briefing and was publicly releasing additional information.

In 2022, after the Department of Defense approved the agency’s disinterment request, the four sets of remains were exhumed from Punchbowl and sent to the agency’s laboratory for analysis.

Scientists at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency used dental, anthropological, and isotope analysis, the agency said. The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System also used mitochondrial DNA analysis.

Carlin’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in the Philippines, along with the others missing from World War II.

“A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for,” the agency said.

Carlin will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in May 2026.

The other men killed in the crash and now positively identified include First Lt. Charles W. McCook, 23, who was the pilot; Second Lt. Nathaniel L. Hightower Jr., 27, the copilot; and Sgt. Sidney Burke, 22, the armor-gunner.

Sgt. John W. Boyd, the radio operator, and Sgt. John E. Leisure Jr., the engineer-gunner, survived after parachuting out of the stricken plane, but were captured.

Leisure died in a Japanese prison camp the following July. Boyd survived 21 months in captivity in the notorious Rangoon Prison Camp, also known as Rangoon Central Jail.

Boyd authored a book that was published in 1996 called Tenko! Rangoon Jail.

The mission on Aug. 3, 1943, was to fly out of Chakulia, India, where the 22nd Bombardment Squadron was based, and strike a dam on the Irrawaddy River at Meiktila in central Burma, Boyd wrote in an excerpt that is available online.

There were three bombers flying to the target, where they would descend to near-treetop level to deliver their payloads. The first two planes were successful, and Boyd later figured that the Japanese gunners had been surprised initially but were ready for the final plane.

“We were on the final run and the ground guns were blazing when suddenly we got hit just inside the bomb bay. It must have been an explosive shell of some type because it made a deafening noise and violently shook the aircraft. McCook took the plane into a steep climb, but we immediately began to feel the heat from the fire inside the bomb bay. It was heating up fast,” Boyd wrote.

“Smoke was beginning to spread throughout the airplane and the heat was intense. The fire in the bomb bay had burned through the intercom wiring so communication with the cockpit was lost. The wind draft through the tail of a B-25 turned the fire into a blow torch. We reacted almost without thinking,” Boyd wrote.

On Aug. 30, 1943, The Inquirer reported that Henry J. Carlin, of the 200 block of West Nedro Avenue, son of Frank J. Carlin, was missing in action.